When The Metrics Don't Measure Our Pain

When IT Problems Defy Logic

There are days when a knotty IT issue becomes every bit a Gordian knot. Every which way you try to untie it, your efforts face a dilemma that seems insoluble, bordering on totally impossible.

The limits of your expertise are tested by situations that usually defy logic or comprehension. You could almost hear yourself wondering whether your analysis stands the test of cogency and a proper understanding of the issue.

Finding Compromises

I offered to help two colleagues with some intractable problems. In one case, we found a useful compromise, having identified the bottlenecks and eliminated the drag created by unreachable links embedded in an active document.

The other was a tougher proposition, not made easier by a user who was a serial tinkerer, effecting unauthorised changes to his device. Then, with shadow identities resulting from a poorly implemented user lifecycle process, everything that could go wrong did. This contrasted sharply with the better setup and possibly more docile cohort of our wider user community.

Grasping at Straws

Each time we thought we had something that explained the problem, the apparent lifeline turned into clutching at straws for dear life. A walk out in the cold did not progress matters. I have now shared the conundrum with a wider technical group, and they are probably just scratching their heads without offering the succour of knowing our pain.

The Metrics Game

It is in the midst of this that the management team expects us to close incidents to fulfil a numbers metric, without any notion of the background effort that goes into issues we simply cannot resolve promptly, conclusively, and confidently. Tomorrow is another day.

A Lighter Note

Meanwhile, I have been thinking along with Brian about suitable collective nouns that anyone can remember and make good sense of. We started with a Bambi of deer and quite likely a Nemo of clownfish. I also fancy a Shaun of sheep.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

A trivia of collective nouns

Four and twenty blackbirds

I have always been fascinated by collective nouns, some so interesting you wonder how they come about. On my walks a few days ago, I came across an interesting sight, blackbirds I thought were crows or even rooks had settled upon the poles of a fence, but when I was speaking to the lady with her companion that feeds the birds, the other day, I used the collective noun embarrassment which I knew was wrong and she suggested parliament.

A parliament of rooks or a murder of crows

A parliament of crows, I thought when I next went by, but it was another few days before I saw a sufficient number settle on the poles of the fences to make it necessary to take a picture and tell a story. Then, she might be correct if the blackbirds were rooks rather than crows; the collective nouns are, a murder of crows or a parliament of rooks. Apparently, the collective noun for crows comes from superstition; the belief that they are harbingers of death sent by the devil or are witches in disguise.

An embarrassment of SANs

Rightly, it is an embarrassment of pandas, but I have also applied that collective noun to SANs, SeniorAdvocates of Nigeria, senior lawyers that the influential troop to the courts to intimidate the prosecution and the bench, usually in the tens that the cost of justice is prohibitive even when the defendant is guilty as sin but has more legal firepower than the state can muster.

I will not go into the list of collective nouns, but one that anyone would love to know for trivia is the collective noun for geese, they are a gaggle of geese on land, a skein of geese in flight and a plump of geese in water. Never give the wrong collective noun to the appearance of things or you are set for, should I say, am embarrassment?

References

Country Life: Collective nouns for birds

Merriam-Webster: A Melody of Harpers and a Poverty of Pipers

Wikipedia: List of animal names